UHQBot
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The first boot of a new Call of Duty game is a crossroads with no right choice: do I jump into the big, flashy campaign headlining the game, or step first unto the virgin grasses of multiplayer, where no meta has yet taken root?
Activision is making that choice a bit easier for those who buy Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 early. In a first for the series, those who pre-order will have early access to the Modern Warfare 2 campaign on October 20, a full week before the game officially launches on October 28.
On top of early campaign access, pre-ordering comes with a few other perks:
- Up to one week early access to the full Modern Warfare II Campaign
- Access to the full game on October 28
- Open Beta Early Access
- Final Judgement Bundle3: Immediate access to the Legendary “Deathknell” Operator Skin and the Legendary “Bloodthirsty” Weapon Blueprint for use in Vanguard and Warzone.
The program mirrors the approach that competitors like EA have taken to incentivize pre-orders and membership programs. Xbox Game Pass Ultimate or EA Play members ($5/mo) can play a 10-hour trial of Madden 23 without purchasing the game, for example.
Earlier access to COD's campaign may not be a huge draw to most players, but I'm more likely to pre-order to get early access to the Modern Warfare 2 beta happening in September (the first few days of which is exclusive to PlayStation players). Activision is really stretching the definition of a "release date" here. Modern Warfare 2 now essentially has three release days:
- One for the campaign (October 20)
- One for multiplayer (October 28)
- …and one for the mysterious Warzone sequel mode coming sometime soon after the official MW2 launch (date unknown)
Staggered releases are an effective technique for sustaining hype across a longer period, but I reckon those jumping into early access on October 20 will be underwhelmed. Launching Modern Warfare to find two-thirds of the game grayed out doesn't sound like an exciting introduction to the next year of CoD. By the time Halo Infinite's campaign released a month after its multiplayer, my Halo excitement had already died down.
Not to mention that you probably won't need a full week to get through Modern Warfare 2's campaign. If it's at all similar to the last 15 Calls of Duty, you'll probably wrap it up in an afternoon or two.
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It's not often that I'll say this, but if you only play Overwatch on PC, you can safely ignore this entire post and move on to other things. But if not—if you play with multiple accounts on multiple platforms—then this is for you: A detailed explainer on how cross-progression will work in Overwatch 2, which will merge Overwatch accounts on consoles and PC into a single, all-encompassing profile that contains (with a few limitations) everything you've previously achieved in the game.
Currently, Overwatch requires a Battle.net account regardless of which platform you're playing on, and that will continue to be the case with Overwatch 2. But instead of having separate accounts for each platform, beginning today players will be able to link their console accounts to their Battle.net account so they can be merged when Overwatch 2 goes live. When that happens, all earned progression and cosmetics from those accounts will be rolled into a single, cross-platform Overwatch 2 profile.
(Image credit: Blizzard)
It seems pretty straightforward overall but there are a few important points of note. Accounts on PC, Xbox, PlayStation, and Switch can be merged, but only one account per platform will be included, so for instance if you have two accounts on PC, they cannot be merged. You can change or modify the console accounts attached to your Battle.net account before you merge, and in fact Blizzard said that "it’s incredibly important to take care that the correct account from each console you plan to link is associated with your Battle.net account," because you only get one shot at it.
As I said up top, if you only play Overwatch on PC, there's nothing for you to do here: Your Overwatch progression will automatically carry over to Overwatch 2 on your Battle.net account, and that's that. If, on the other hand, you're a multiplatform player who for some reason doesn't want to merge accounts, that's more of a "too bad" situation: "You will continue to be served an in-game screen that identifies your accounts and prompts approval to merge," presumably until you either give up and merge your accounts, or give up and find a new hobby.
Overwatch 2 is set to go live—and, don't forget, completely replace Overwatch—on October 4. Full details on the merge, which will also include stats, skill rating, endorsements, and achievements, are up at playoverwatch.com. If you play Overwatch on multiple platforms but haven't bothered to connect them to your Battle.net account, you can do that at—big surprise!—battle.net.
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The hot new gacha game of the minute Tower of Fantasy garnered enough interest during its launch last week to give players the traditional warm welcome of lengthy server queues with a special side of cursed graphical glitches. Hotta Studio is now keeping players informed with bug fix reports, including server cap increases that should help cut down on those queues this week.
"We have received a large number of Wanderers' feedback and suggestions since the official launch, and we are now working to address the problems that you encountered," Hotta Studio says in its post on Tuesday.
The main improvements for players who'd just like to get into the game are server cap increases and "and improvement of server recommendation logic." Hotta Studio doesn't break down the numbers, but the longest queue I spotted was on the European server Anomora with a one hour 45 minute wait time. That's another improvement that's been made—accuracy of the queue time estimates. Both of those changes have been made on PC and are incoming for mobile players.
Also on the upcoming fixes list is "Improvement of the game’s anti-cheat mechanism, and the announcement regarding the first batch of Wanderers caught using cheats along with their punishments." (It is amusing to hear a developer use the word "punishments" so nonchalantly in its official communiqués.) Blank error popup windows which appear to still be stymying mobile players, are also on the to-fix list, Hotta says.
You can keep up with more of Hotta's dev reports on its website or in the launcher as additional changes are made.
As for whether it's actually worth picking up, fellow PC Gamer editor Tyler Colp has tried Tower of Fantasy out and dubbed it a messy Genshin Impact. If you are finding it to your liking though, make sure to snap up these Tower of Fantasy codes for free currency.
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VTuber Tony the Tiger and his milk-fueled gaming PC will be live on Twitch this week.
Kellogg's furry cereal mascot has been given facial articulation and translated into a VTuber model so he fits in with a squad of popular streamers while they play a battle royale game on Twitch this Friday, August 19.
The project comes via a partnership between Kellogg's and Twitch's Brand Partnership Studio, continuing an unnerving trend of branded VTubers who blur the line between streaming and advertising.
VTubers, including those tied to popular brands, have been around in Japan for several years, but are only starting to appear in the west as the streaming style has surged in popularity. It's unsurprising to see big companies jump on the trend when many of them already have walking and talking mascots ready to go.
It started with not-quite-VTuber Wendy of fast food chain Wendy's streaming Fortnite several years ago and Chuck E Cheese yelling "poggers", and now, with proper VTuber models, the brand mascots have more reason to infiltrate Twitch and YouTube. Anime streaming site CrunchyRoll has its orange-haired Crunchyroll-Hime, Netflix has N-ko Mei Kurono, and Sonic and Tails have both hosted streams where they talk directly to chat.
Image 1 of 3(Image credit: Sega)Image 2 of 3CrunchyRoll VTuber (Image credit: CrunchyRoll)Image 3 of 3Netflix VTuber (Image credit: Netflix)Now, a 70-year-old tiger originally created to make you buy more cereal is going to vie for a chicken dinner live on Twitch and probably run a lot of ads doing it. In the sole screenshot included in the press release (via Yahoo!) for the event, you can see that Tony will adopt the neon streamer aesthetic with a shock-mounted mic, a cat ear headset, and a "milk-coolant" gaming PC chugging in the background.
Twitch's global head of its Brand Partnership Studio, Adam Harris, calls Tony's VTuber debut an "innovative concept" that "taps into the growing popularity of VTubing on Twitch," before citing the rapid growth of the form of streaming in the last year. It's true, some of the biggest streamers on Twitch don't show their real faces. Shortly after a 31-day subathon, VTuber Ironmouse became the most subscribed female streamers in Twitch's history, pulling in over 170,000 subscribers. And both Pokimane and Sodapoppin, two of the biggest streamers on Twitch, have used VTuber models before.
But the novelty of an animated avatar only goes so far, especially if you're backed by a billion dollar food manufacturer. After seeing his embarrassingly stale TikToks, I doubt Tony the Tiger's thinly-disguised advertisement stream will earn him thousands of young, dedicated fans either. Stick to the cereal box, Tony.
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Just a few weeks after acknowledging the "misstep" of plagiarizing the Floof Fury skin for Call of Duty: Warzone, Activision is facing accusations of having done it again, this time with a skin that looks remarkably similar to a "Variant" in Midnight Society's upcoming extraction shooter Deadrop.
Variants, in the world of Deadrop, are the players who purchased the first round of early access passes to the game. Among the bonuses granted to them for being first in line are "VisorCortex IDs," which are basically NFTs that grant unique visor skins to those who own them. Think Daft Punk but more overtly martial.
(Image credit: Midnight Society)"The VisorCortex acts as your identity within the Midnight Society and can be used as your verified avatar in and outside the community," the studio explained in March, before Midnight Society's game had a proper title. "Variants may sell their Access Pass along with their attached VisorCortex ID to relinquish their utility within the Midnight Society or trade VisorCortex IDs with other Access Pass holders without losing their Variant perks."
Fast-forward to this week, when Activision rolled out the new Doomsayer skin for Call of Duty: Warzone and Vanguard. The centerpiece of the skin is a glowing, pale blue holographic skull beneath a loose-fitting grey hood, which people quickly noticed bears a strong resemblance to a Deadrop visor skin. And not just any visor skin, but very specifically the one belonging to Robert Bowling, who prior to his days at Midnight Society was community relations manager and creative strategist at Call of Duty studio Infinity Ward.
Bowling appeared to acknowledge the similarities on Twitter, writing—without any obvious context, although it was impossible to miss—"At least name it after me." And there's certainly no question that the designs look very much alike.
I think @fourzerotwo (Robert Bowling) is going to be happy to see that Activision just added his own skin in #Vanguard
Maybe not... ->
pic.twitter.com/vZTyWIp2pZAugust 16, 2022See moreAt the same time, and with all due respect, both designs are also, well, awfully generic. Skull masks have been around for just about as long as skulls have (I was a big fan of General Kael's look in Willow), and in the Call of Duty series since 2009. Ghost's mask isn't holographic, but the one worn by Spectre, a character from Black Ops 3 and 4, definitely is, and so is Stitch's "Corrupted Cranium" skin. We're not exactly breaking new ground here, and personally I don't think it's too much of a leap to see Bowling's Midnight Society visor skin as a tip of the hat to his days at Infinity Ward, which inevitably leads to the question of who's really emulating who.
Still, it's hard to overlook the specifics: The luminous blue hue, the hood, and the dark patch at the top of the skull in the Doomsayer skin are virtual dead ringers for Bowling's design. And the Floof Fury situation in July—which at last check Activision still has not acknowledged as plagiarism, or even apologized for—does not inspire great confidence that this is all just a strange coincidence.
I've reached out to Activision and Bowling for comment and will update if I receive a reply.
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AMD is set to talk about the future of Ryzen processors in a livestream on August 29 entitled "together we advance_PCs." AMD's been talking a big game about these Zen 4-powered Ryzen chips for a few months now, so it'll be good to finally get some more information before their rumored fall launch.
AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su and a handful of team red execs will be hosting the event that "will present details on the latest ’Zen 4’ architecture that powers upcoming AMD Ryzen processors and the all-new AM5 platform built around the latest technologies including DDR5 and PCIe5, all designed to drive a new era of performance desktop PCs," according to today's very brief press release.
We expect a lot of information regarding AM5, AMD's first socket and motherboard platform update in about six years. Exciting news for anyone looking to build themselves a brand new AMD gaming rig this holiday season.
Recent conflicting price leaks of four Ryzen 7000 chips show that we may have to brace ourselves financially this fall. The cheapest of the bunch, the Ryzen 5 7600X, is rumored to cost as high as $339, while the flagship CPU, the Ryzen 9 5950, allegedly will retail for nearly $900.
This fall should be an exciting time for the next generation of CPUs. AMD and Intel are launching significantly more powerful chips than their previous generations. We've seen some impressive numbers from Intel's Raptor Lake chips, making this conflict of dueling CPU families for the best gaming CPU a lot more competitive.
The livestream is set to take place on August 29 at 7 pm ET on AMD's YouTube channel.
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League of Legends is one of gaming's media juggernauts. When it debuted in 2009, I wouldn't have believed you if you'd told me that a concept that began as a Warcraft III map would go on to be the basis for multiple games, several fun music videos and live K-pop performances, and of course, a hit Netflix show.
With the continuing expansion of League, you might assume that League of Legends, which is honing in on its 13th anniversary, is heading into its retirement phase. But League is as good as it has ever been. Constant balance changes, new champions and complete reworks of old favorites mean there is almost always something new to learn.
That’s not to say there aren't live issues. With Riot reporting at the end of 2021 it had over 180 million monthly players, it would be impossible to please everyone. But after years of experience, the development team has become incredibly skilled at interpreting and responding to these issues, often pretty quickly and with a good amount of communication. I think that League and its overall community is in one of the best positions it has been for many years.
Riot's Netflix series Arcane won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Animation. (Image credit: Riot Games/Netflix)What’s been happening recently?
The Durability Update, which Riot deployed in May, has been a divisive subject since it was implemented. One of League's biggest mid-season patches, the goal of the update was to make champions tankier after years of damage creep across pretty much every area. Every champion in the game was given more HP, armor and magic resist, while systems such as healing, shields and everything else that can be used to try and sustain your health pool during fights were rebalanced, with most being made more effective to stay in line with the increased health pools.
The goal of this update was to try and make fights longer, and reduce the frequency of one-shotting opponents before they have a chance to react. The impact on the meta was almost instant and mostly delivered on the promise, with fights stretching out into longer engagements and the ability to one-shot an opponent greatly reduced.
I think the only realistic solution is to continue to balance champions individually.
But there was one big consequence of the update that most people, including Riot, weren’t keen on. As every champion is now tankier from the get-go, kills during the opening minutes of matches became harder to secure. At the top levels, this meant the meta shifted to favor champions that scale to their peak in the late game, such as Gangplank and Jinx, because the typical counter of shutting them down early when they are weak wasn’t particularly effective. They were often backed up by healers and other champs who can help sustain them into the late game.
Most of the recent patches have tried to address this in a few ways. In patch 12.14 healing potions and defensive runes were nerfed significantly, making it harder to stay in lane and get back to full health without a trip back home. While champions with strong healing abilities, who had sometimes felt like must-picks, have mostly seen their effectiveness reduced in recent updates.
It’s certainly been a step in the right direction, but it still feels like more could be done to make the early game more meaningful. Simply increasing damage would just walk back the impact of Riot's durability update. I think the only realistic solution is to continue to balance champions individually, hopefully making some early game supports effective enough to occasionally shut down late-game-scaling champs in the opening minutes of a match.
(Image credit: Riot Games)Are players happy?
Acknowledging that League's player population is one of the biggest and most diverse on planet Earth, the answer for most players is yes. Despite some shared frustrations League of Legends is in a good state, and crucially, when a major issue does pop up Riot has been quick to fix it in recent years, as it did with the Durability Update with initial changes coming in the first few days and a massive patch in a couple of weeks..
League's recent controversies, or at least those that were big in the Western communities, tend to focus around systems that sit outside of the game itself, such as Riot’s communication, management of the pro scene or customer service.
We finally got to see Udyr’s new look recently and initial impressions are good.
There’s been a lot of chatter about both the pro scene in North America and how Riot is marketing the game in the region. One example being the disappointment from fans when they banned LCS players from taking part in the big Mr Beast vs Ninja celebrity showmatch, and then banned former pro Doublelift from co-streaming the LCS for criticizing their decision. Then there was the viral story which easily topped the sub-Reddit of a Korean streamer who was trolled for three hours in a single match and then banned, which isn’t a great look.
(Image credit: Riot Games)When’s the next big update?
The next game-changing patch will arrive at the end of the year when pre-season hits. Slowly, details of what we can expect in pre-season are starting to trickle out, with the first major area of change being the jungle.
Riot revealed it wants to make the jungle less intimidating, which, for someone who only ventured in there when jungle Graves first became a thing and was OP, is incredibly welcome. Systems to show recommended paths to take in the early levels, simplifying the leash mechanics and even the addition of pets who will help you take camps have all been revealed as things the dev team is working on. Although there’s no specifics just yet and this could still all change with a few months of Season 12 left to go, the thought of the jungle being a role you can just drop in and play pretty easily with a wide range of champs like most of the others is pretty exciting.
Until then we can expect the smaller, incremental patches to keep tweaking the strongest and weakest champions, and most likely keep tinkering with systems to try and reign in the impact of the Durability Update.
Fans of Udyr can look forward to his complete rework that will, hopefully, revitalise the aged champion when it launches with patch 12.16. After winning a fan vote where he had more than double the number of votes of the next closest champion, we finally got to see Udyr’s new look recently and initial impressions are good. Visually it's a massive improvement, with a lot of fans on Reddit loving his more mature dad-bod look that ties into his lore a lot better. Early PBE testers suggest that the new and improved Udyr retains the core of the champion’s design (iconic stances that Udyr can change between), and that the bonuses you get from swapping stances add depth that wasn’t there before.
The other change that could have a big impact on the game for most players is the addition of League of Legends to Xbox Game Pass, which is both exciting and mildly worrying at the same time. Subscribers to Game Pass will unlock every champion, which should encourage some players to experiment with new characters. The potential downside of this is that there’s a chance that for the first few weeks after it becomes available, your games will be filled with people playing champs they've never used.
Things I’d like to see in LoL’s future
(Image credit: Riot Games)A new or just significantly improved client, please, literally anything to make it better
The League of Legends client continues to be underwhelming at best and incredibly frustrating at worst. Many players continue to complain about the system resources it takes for seemingly doing very little, you still have to sit on the loading screen for an age instead of it loading assets in the background as pretty much every similar game does, and it's lacking basic features like being able to preview a skin you might want to buy in-game.
Unfortunately a client update doesn’t seem to be on Riot’s priority list, with no significant client updates announced. Community sentiment, especially on Reddit, also seems to be getting less positive over time, with at least one major thread a week popping up about the state of the client, no doubt helped by how resource intensive the recent Star Guardian homepages have been. The second most-upvoted thread on r/LeagueOfLegends in the past month featured video clips of some nice client animation improvements Riot showed off in 2016 that never materialized.
(Image credit: Riot Games)A big map change
Games can and should change their play spaces. Basketball's three-point line—something we associate with the sport inseparably—was only introduced in 1979. Valve has overhauled and tweaked Counter-Strike maps that have been around since '99. I'm sure that a lot of players would object to major changes to League's map, but there hasn’t been a truly game-changing core map update since 2014. At this stage in the game's lifespan, everyone knows the best routes to take through the jungle, the most important objectives and the optimum locations to fight or sneak up on opponents. Wouldn’t it get us all out of our comfort zones if a lot of that ingrained knowledge had to be relearned?
Taking a look across the other side of the river, map changes are one of the key ways Dota 2 has managed to keep itself fresh and exciting over the years. Its map is almost unrecognisable from the one it had in 2014, and the map changes have proved much more impactful in shaking up the entire game than adjusting individual heroes or core systems.
When shrines (healing pools dotted around the map), were added to Dota 2 it created a meta where you had to burst down foes quickly before they could heal up without a trip to base. When they were removed and outposts were added (a neutral structure on either side of the map that one team can control), position and territory control became even more important. The repositioning of Roshan, Dota’s version of Baron, completely changed how fights happen around the objective and removed one of the major advantages for one team. All of these changes meant players had to relearn what were core parts of the game for many years.
It would take some getting used to, and no doubt it would be one of the biggest shakeups in LoL history, but after eight years of largely the same map, it sure feels like a good time to flip the table on Summoner's Rift.
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If Roadwarden had a smell it would either be setting-appropriate horse manure or the crispness of a secondhand but new-to-you 600 page paperback. I've recently been getting back to my roots reading fantasy novels the width of my forearm and just an hour with the demo for this narrative adventure RPG feels similar. Roadwarden's medieval fantasy story leads with proper nouns and a glossary to study them with, ambient guitar tracks, and pixelated art in muted colors to round out the dense fantasy vibes.
Solo developer joint Moral Anxiety studio explains that it "tells the tale of an explorer hired by a powerful merchant guild, tasked with journeying to a mysterious peninsula to spread the guild’s influence." Roadwarden's developer says it borrows from the stylings of RPGs, visual novels, and interactive fiction. The center of the screen displays all the text and dialogue while the left is a pixel art rendering of the setting that evolves as you progress through the scene with your choices and occasional text prompts.
Taking up the role of a Roadwarden, I chose my name and background for wading into a world of magic (pneuma), dangerous beasts (griffons), and several religious factions where just keeping the roads safe for trade is an unenviable job. I won't recount the rest of the lore bits for you. Either you're into that sort of thing, in which case Roadwarden will give you more than enough on its own, or you aren't and I'll avoid brewing you the setting soup. Suffice it to say it's got the texture of dark, dangerous RPGs of old—monsters and magic and beleaguered innkeepers and all.
In conversation, I was able to opt for various dispositions—playful, polite, distant, threatening. Different encounters call for their own measures, which I found when getting to know the guards and proprietor of an inn along the road. The guards were happy to have a joke at my expense and responded well to my playful banter though they warned me their boss didn't take as well to levity. As time passed with my actions, I also managed my health, pneuma, appearance, and food, along with an inventory of useful items and a quest log of loose ends. Even deeper in my journal, personal statistics like "spared animals" and "gambling experience" promised as much character development as I could want to wrap my mind around.
Roadwarden has just launched a new demo on Steam for you to try all this for yourself if you like. It's also slapped a September 8 launch date on its store page, so the full release—which Moral Anxiety Studio has estimated is about 40 hours of play time—will be available in short order.
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As the most feared and powerful members of the undead, vampires still have to follow a heck of a lot of rules. You have to stay out of sunlight. Garlic and crucifixes are a no-no. You can't cross running water, can't enter churches, and if someone throws rice at your feet you have to stand there and count the grains.
Most annoyingly, you can't enter someone's house unless invited.
But here's an excellent solution to that last rule: Instead of entering your victims' homes, just have them come to yours. In the first-person management sim Bloody Hell Hotel, which looks like a mix of House Flipper, Stardew Valley, and V Rising, you're a vampire renovating your spacious manor and turning it into a classy hotel. And unlike most hotel owners, you can dine on the blood of your guests.
As an ancient bloodsucker, you awaken after a slumber of centuries to find your once great manor in utter shambles. It'll be lots of hard work restoring the estate, but on the plus side, you're a vampire. As you can see in the trailer above, via IGN, you can enchant a broomstick to start sweeping up and use telekinetic powers to move furniture and clear debris. Install appliances that probably weren't invented the last time you were awake, grow plants in the gloomy cellar and harvest them to make meals, and decorate your hotel so it's appealing to wealthy bloodbags, er, visitors.
Making your guests happy is important to any hotel manager, but once again, don't forget that you're a damn vampire. If a particular guest is a pest, kicking in their door and drinking their blood is much easier than dealing with a bad review. And no need to let the fresh corpse go to waste. Along with milking your undead cow and collecting eggs from zombie chickens, you can use your deceased guests for meat while preparing delicious room service meals.
Turning a dusty, busted mansion into an upscale hotel takes more than magic and a supply of necks. Resources need to come from somewhere, so you can forge weapons in your basement and visit the catacombs beneath your estate to kill skeletons, zombies, and other horrors as you hunt for new ways to upgrade your hotel's amenities. You can even recruit vampire assistants to help you out, giving them jobs at the front desk or in the kitchen.
Bloody Hell Hotel comes from the maker of horror puzzle platformer Darq. There's no release date yet, but the dev is planning to launch it on Steam, GoG, and the Epic Games Store.
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Sony has been wading into the sweet waters of PC gaming with real intent over the past few years with some very good ports of previously PlayStation-exclusive hits including Horizon Zero Dawn, God of War, and—coming soon—Uncharted. It may be getting ready to go deeper with its own exclusive game launcher: VGC reports that references to a "PlayStation PC launcher" have been found in the files of the recently-released PC version of Marvel's Spider-Man.
Currently, Sony's PC releases go where you'd expect them to: Steam and the Epic Games Store. But the reference to a separate PlayStation launcher opens the possibility that Sony could follow in the steps of Activision and Bethesda by offering its games in its own walled garden. Given that PlayStation's games are already on Steam, my guess is that Sony will introduce an intermediary launcher not unlike Ubisoft's Ubisoft Connect, which contains a separate user profile and appears whenever you launch one of its games from Steam or Epic.
The discovery of a reference to a PC launcher follows shortly behind a report of a similar finding indicating that Sony could be preparing to let PC gamers link PlayStation Network accounts to its games, with in-game bonuses on offer for those who do so. This again would be in-line with the kind of incentives Ubisoft offers through Ubisoft Connect.
Sony has established a stronger foothold on PC after releasing five first-party exclusives in the last two years:
- Horizon Zero Dawn Complete Edition (Aug 7, 2020)
- Days Gone (May 18, 2021)
- Predator: Hunting Grounds (Apr 29, 2021)
- God of War (Jan 14, 2022)
- Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered (Aug 12, 2022)
Moving to a proprietary platform would potentially allow PlayStation to make more money from fewer sales, as the publisher has to fork over a 30% cut to Valve on all Steam sales (reducing to 25% after $10M earned, and 20% after $50M; and a somewhat less onerous 12% to Epic for EGS sales). And we're not talking about couch change here: Sony predicted in May that it will earn $300 million in PC game sales in 2022, a huge jump from the $80 million it earned in 2021, and $35 million in 2020. Even with its own launcher in play, I strongly suspect that the vast majority of PlayStation PC sales would continue to be made through Steam. But a standalone launcher could simplify the process of integrating PlayStation Network functionality into its games, for instance, and possibly even gamer-friendly features similar to Play Anywhere on Xbox, which grants multi-platform access to games regardless of which platform they're actually purchased for.
Interestingly, this isn't the first time that a possible PlayStation PC launcher has come up: XboxEra Podcast co-host Nick Baker referenced a rumor about a PlayStation PC launcher back in February. "I've been told that they are going to have a PC launcher, and I believe they're looking into implementing cross-buy with that," Baker said. "So if you get a PlayStation version, you get the PC—just like Microsoft has Play Anywhere."
Uh…I talked about the PlayStation PC launcher 6 months ago lolhttps://t.co/Q7Ki23tvwcAugust 16, 2022
See moreI've reached out to Sony for comment on the PlayStation PC launcher discovery, and will update if I receive a reply.
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More top Genshin Impact builds(Image credit: miHoYo)
Genshin Impact Heizou build: Brawling detective
Genshin Impact Klee build: Little red bomber
Genshin Impact Kazuha build: Anemo ronin
Genshin Impact Yelan build: Hydro spy
Genshin Impact Kuki build: Loyal lieutenantTighnari is one of the three characters that is arriving with the Sumeru update, and like Collei, he's also an archer that belongs to the brand new Dendro element that's being introduced in version 3.0. Dendro is the power of plants, and though it already exists in Genshin Impact in a minor form, the Sumeru update is the first time we'll see Dendro vision characters.
So, what do we know about the fox boy? Unlike Collei, who features in the Genshin Impact prequel manga, we don't know much about him except that he's the head of the Avidya Forest rangers; a new location that we should get to visit when Sumeru arrives. His kit of abilities also sounds pretty wild, firing arrows that break up into multiple homing projectiles.
In this Genshin Impact Tighnari guide, I'll explain his possible release date, as well as his newly-revealed abilities so you can get a better idea of what this five-star Dendro character is capable of.
Release date
What is the Tighnari release date?
Tighnari will release alongside Sumeru in version 3.0 on August 24. His banner, Viridescent Vigil, will run throughout the first phase of the update with Collei as a four-star alternative.
"I brought back a specialty from the desert, two packs of honeyed dates, which helps to replenish your energy, whether in the morning or at night." —An anonymously source◆ Tighnari◆ Verdant Strider◆ Avidya Forest Watcher◆ Dendro◆ Vulpes Zerda#GenshinImpact pic.twitter.com/we5Mx9w53cJuly 11, 2022
See moreAbilities
Tighnari's abilities
Thanks to Honey Hunter we already know Tighnari's abilities, constellations, and passives, though these might change before he's actually released.
Normal attack: Khanda Barrier-Buster Normal Fires up to four consecutive shots with a bow. Charged Fires a precise charged shot that deals more damage. Charge level one fires an arrow that deals Dendro damage. Charge level two fires a Wreath Arrow that deals Dendro damage and spawns four Clusterbloom Arrows that track opponents and deal Dendro damage. Plunging Fires off a shower of arrows before hitting the ground, dealing AoE damage on impact. Elemental skill Vijnana-Phala Mine Tighnari throws a Vijnana Stormheart that deals AoE Dendro damage and creates a Vijnana-Khanda field that confuses enemies within. Tighnari also gains the Vijnana-Penetrator effect which decreases Wreath Arrow charge time by 1.5 seconds. This effect ceases after three Wreath Arrows are fired. Elemental burst Fashioner's Tanglevine Shaft Fires six Tanglevine Shafts that track opponents and deal Dendro damage. After these hit, they create another wave of Tanglevine Shafts. Passives Encyclopedic Knowledge Displays the location of nearby Sumeru resources on the mini-map. Keen Sight After firing a Wreath Arrow, Tighnari's elemental mastery is buffed by 50 for four seconds. Scholarly Blade For every point of Tighnari's elemental mastery, his charged attack and Fashioner's Tanglevine Shaft damage are increased by 0.05 percent. The max bonus from this is 50 percent. Constellations Beginnings Determined at the Roots Tighnari's charged attack crit rate is increased by 15 percent. Origins Known From the Stem When opponents are within the Vajna-Khanda Field, Tighnari gains 20 percent increased Dendro damage for six seconds. Fortunes Read Amongst the Branches Increases the level of Tanglevine Fashioner's Shaft by three. Maximum upgrade level is 15. Withering Glimpsed in the Leaves When Fashioner's Tanglevine Shaft is used, all party members gain 60 elemental mastery for eight seconds. If it triggers Burning, Bloom, Aggravate, or Spread reactions, their elemental mastery will be buffed by a further 60 and the duration of the buff will be refreshed. Comprehension Amidst the Flowers Increases the level of Vijnana-Phala Mine by three. Maximum upgrade level is 15. Karma Adjudged From the Leaden Fruit Wreath Arrow's charge time is decreased by 0.9 seconds and produces an extra Clusterbloom Arrow on hit. -
More top Genshin Impact builds(Image credit: miHoYo)
Genshin Impact Heizou build: Brawling detective
Genshin Impact Klee build: Little red bomber
Genshin Impact Kazuha build: Anemo ronin
Genshin Impact Yelan build: Hydro spy
Genshin Impact Kuki build: Loyal lieutenantCollei is one of the new Genshin Impact characters to be revealed in advance of version 3.0 and the introduction of the Sumeru region. She's one of two characters, alongside Tighnari, who use the new Dendro element which will be added with the tropical, jungle-strewn region. Dendro is a plant element, after all, letting players manipulate life to create all sorts of new reactions.
Collei is a ranger-in-training in the Avidya Forest; one of the new locations we can expect to visit in Sumeru. Like Tighnari, the head ranger, she is also a Dendro bow-user, though she's a four-star character. Collei actually features quite heavily in the Genshin Impact prequel manga, due to her grudge against the Fatui, and she's even acquainted with fellow Mondstadt ranger, Amber. Chances are her story will play a reasonably big part in Sumeru's questline.
In this Genshin Impact Collei guide, I'll talk through her possible release date, as well as her newly released abilities so you can find out what she's capable of.
Release date
When is the Collei release date?
Collei is arriving at the start of version 3.0 on August 24. She will be available as part of both Tighnari and Zhongli's banners during the first phase of the update. It's also worth noting that you'll get Collei for free just by completing the tutorial quest for the Graven Innocence event.
"Oh, you're going to Sumeru? Can you give my regards to Collei? Well... it's been so long, I wonder if her hair has grown out and if she's taller?" — Amber◆ Collei◆ Sprout of Rebirth◆ Avidya Forest Ranger Trainee◆ Dendro◆ Leptailurus Cervarius#GenshinImpact #Sumeru pic.twitter.com/sYz8bk8o57July 11, 2022
See moreAbilities
Collei's abilities
We already know Collei's abilities, constellations, and passives (Thanks Honey Hunter), though since these are pre-beta, chances are they could change before version 3.0 comes out:
Normal attack: Supplicant's Bowmanship Normal Perform up to four shots with a bow. Charged Perform a precise shot with increased damage. Fully charged shots deal Dendro damage. Plunging Fire off a shower of arrows before plunging to the ground dealing AoE damage. Elemental skill Floral Brush Throw a Floral Ring that deals Anemo damage to opponents along its path. The ring returns after a short time dealing another instance of Dendro damage. Elemental burst Trump-Card Kitty Throws the doll, Cuilein-Anbar, causing an AoE Dendro explosion and creating a Cuilein-Anbar zone that deals AoE Dendro damage. Passives Gliding Champion of Sumeru Reduces gliding stamina consumption for your party by 20 percent. Floral Sidewinder If a party member triggers Burning, Quicken, Bloom, Aggravate, Spread, Hyperbloom, or Burgeon reactions before the Floral Ring returns, the character is granted the Sprout effect. This deals Dendro damage equivalent to 40 percent of Collei's attack to nearby opponents for three seconds. The Languid Wood When a character within the Culein-Anbar zone triggers Burning, Quicken, Bloom, Aggravate, Spread, Hyperbloom, or Burgeon, the zone's duration is increased by one second. Constellations Deepwood Patrol When in the party and not on the field, Collei's energy recharge is buffed by 20 percent. Through Hill and Copse Allows you to increase the duration of Sprout from Floral Sidewinder by three seconds when you trigger Burning, Quicken, Bloom, Aggravate, Spread, Hyperbloom, or Burgeon reactions. Scent of Summer Increases level of Floral Brush by three. Maximum upgrade level is 15. Gift of the Woods Using Trump-Card Kitty will increase all characters' elemental mastery by 60 for 12 seconds, excluding Collei. All Embers Increases the level of Trump-Card Kitty by three. Maximum upgrade level is 15. Forest of Falling Arrows When the Floral Ring hits opponents it will create a Cullein-Anbar that deals 200 percent of Collei's attack as Dendro damage. Each Floral Brush can only create one. -
Need to know
What is it? A platform fighter with an eclectic, iconic cast of characters.
Expect to pay Free-to-play
Release date August 16, 2022
Developer Player First Games
Publisher Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment
Reviewed on Nvidia GeForce RTX3070, AMD Ryzen 7 2700X, 16GB RAM
Multiplayer? Yes
Link Official siteI'm Adventure Time's Jake the Dog, standing on the edge of a Ricky and Morty-themed arena. I'm about to beat Shaggy from Scooby-Doo into a bloody pulp while my teammate Arya Stark is casually stealing Batman's face. A few years ago this would have given me severe whiplash, but in a world where tennis star Naomi Osaka is throwing hands at Naruto in Fortnite, nothing surprises me anymore. Well, except for one thing: MultiVersus is actually pretty damn good.
Believe me, I never expected it either. The initial reveal left me disinterested—it looked like another weaksauce attempt to be Smash Bros., and I'm not much of a platform fighter gal anyway. I much prefer my fighting games in a tight, enclosed 3D arena a la Tekken and Soulcalibur. I came into MultiVersus not expecting much, yet found that Player First Games have begun to lay the groundwork for something remarkable.
Don't get me wrong, MultiVersus doesn't try to hide its inspiration. Anyone who has spent a modicum of time with Nintendo's brawler will quickly get the gist: smack your opponent with a mixture of normal, air and special attacks in order to increase their damage meter; avoid letting them do the same to you. Victory has nothing to do with getting a health bar from 100 to zero, it's all done through the damage meter. While the number is low, you're weighty and difficult to knock off the top and sides of the arena. As it gets higher though, your character turns into a rubber bouncy ball and becomes susceptible to all kinds of spikes and knockbacks that can fling you straight into the death zone. Knock your opponent out of the arena enough times and you'll claim victory.
Wombo combo
It's your standard platform fighter fare at this point, but MultiVersus manages a few key differences that really set it apart. The first one is how the game handles its roster—every single character is allocated a distinct class: tank, support, mage, bruiser and assassin. Tanks like Wonder Woman and Iron Giant can take more hits and are harder to ring out but are generally slower. Assassins like Finn the Human and Arya Stark are nimble fighters, pulling out every trick in the book to deal big damage quickly.
(Image credit: Warner Bros.)What's nice is there doesn't feel like any pressure to match up particular classes—you can easily run a team of two supports and successfully outmatch heavy artillery bruisers and tanks if you have the skill. They're a great initial indicator of how you can expect to play each character, but it doesn't feel like any one class is at an inherent disadvantage compared to the others.
There are also the game modes themselves. While other platformers feel more at home in a free-for-all or 1v1 setting, MultiVersus thrives off a 2v2 format. The other two modes are present in the game, but this game was absolutely made for 2v2 and it's where I spent most of my time. Every character has abilities that can support teammates as well as harm foes. Jake the Dog can swallow opponents and spit them out, but he can also quickly chomp an ally and save them from a nasty combo. Wonder Woman's lasso can grab onto opponents but also serve as a quick rescue for teammates.
Killer instinct
It took me a while to get used to the synergy of playing with another person, and to the way MultiVersus feels in general. It's an awful lot floatier than other fighting games I've played—it's lacking a bit of weight, and characters can hover around for what occasionally feels like a lifetime. It starts to feel pretty good once you're in the flow of things though. While I would still like a little more snap, the floatiness feels largely necessary for decent recovery and actually making use of those teammate abilities.
I came into MultiVersus not expecting much, yet found that Player First Games have begun to lay the groundwork for something remarkable.
I had access to the entire roster straightaway, but those coming into it free-to-play will have to work to unlock each one. Thankfully each one is readily available to try out in the training mode free of charge and a regular free character rotation lets you experiment with relative ease. It's also not too much of a slog to reach your first paid character, though subsequent progress slows down.
As I tinkered around with each character, I ended up taking a liking to Iron Giant—he's about twice the size of everyone else and prone to a heavy smackdown, but in return he can dish out big damage and easily shield teammates, allowing them to safely get a fair few hits in on the other team. At first I was an absolute letdown, butt-stomping my way off the map and having my car-swinging shenanigans quickly shut down. But my god, nothing was as satisfying as moments where I could finally land my big shiny metal rear on an opponent, launching them into the air as my teammate jumped and poked them straight out of the arena.
Playing each character also becomes a hell of a lot more fun once you level them up and gain perks. Every game played with a character gives them EXP, and levelling up grants access to unique and shared perks that give you small buffs and extra skills. You can even stack these perks with your teammate for extra benefits, which makes the pre-match setup feel a lot more strategic at higher levels. After I played around enough with Iron Giant, I was given a perk that made his rocket boots leave a trail of fire on the ground. It was a move I hadn't felt much need to use before, but once I was able to scorch my tiny nemeses beneath my feet I found myself integrating it into my play a lot more.
Punching down
There are some glaring frustrations with how MultiVersus plays, though. Hit priority is a mess, a problem that even I could spot at a casual level. For the uninitiated, when two moves connect the priority is generally given to whichever attack has more power. If both attacks hit simultaneously and have a similar power level, they'll cancel each other out. It doesn't seem to be at all present in MultiVersus.
Couple that with what appears to be an odd hitbox and hurtbox system, and it's a pain in the 'donkey' to contend with. I noticed this with Finn in particular—his backpack has become a meme, having an oddly gigantic hitbox and causing him to win a lot of matchups he shouldn't. It's worth noting that the hitbox/hurtbox system is already receiving an overhaul, but right now it's a pretty major flaw. Those at a super casual level likely won't perceive it in finer detail, but it was something that became increasingly obvious to me as I spent more time with the game.
I also have some pretty major gripes with the current map designs. There are currently eight stages in MultiVersus, with two of those being variations on another existing map. I had to go and look that up just now, because I can only remember two of the stages: the Scooby-Doo and Rick and Morty ones. The latter I only recall because it was unlocked as part of a community challenge. The Scooby-Doo one, however, has the honour of being my most and least favourite stage. It's the only one I recall having some form of fun interactions—you can punch a wee cog on either side of the arena to cause a portion of the platform to disappear. It's also painstakingly small, bordering on suffocating. It doesn't help that I play a character who is three times the size of the rest of the cast, but larger maps wouldn't go amiss.
(Image credit: Warner Bros.)Most stages consist of one main platform and then two or three smaller platforms above it. They're fine. But they feel so cramped and uninspired, like being stuck in an elevator made of white bread. There are a couple of wall breaks here and there and they look pretty enough, but they're devoid of the levels of creativity Player First Games has managed to demonstrate through its roster.
Baby steps
Unsurprisingly, MultiVersus is also home to a battle pass. I've never been a fan of them and this one is no different. It's only a short preseason battle pass right now with 15 tiers. There's a nice distribution of rewards throughout the tier, but progression feels unsatisfying. I spent most of my time farming my seasonal milestones, which are randomised per player with no ability to reroll. It meant I was gunning for some ridiculous and unfun goals like ringing out 25 opponents at less than 60 damage or connecting 200 fully charged attacks. More battle pass points per match would go a long way, along with the ability to reroll some more frustrating milestones outside of my skill level.
As it stands, MultiVersus has done a bang-up job of laying the foundations for a fantastic platform fighter that has the potential to blossom into something amazing. Killer backpacks and janky hitboxes aside, each character is brimming with personality and movesets that never feel too out-of-character. It's definitely helped by the fact that Warner Bros. was able to recruit a ton of the cast's original voice actors, something that you don't see very often. It's a game not without its teething problems though—until hitbox and hit priorities are set straight, MultiVersus will continue to fall flat for people at a higher skill level. But for a game still technically in open beta, MultiVersus is a worthy competitor in the platform fighter genre.
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I've written so many articles covering AI image generators recently, specifically super poignant things other people have generated, and it's compelled me to do a bit of testing. I decided to gauge the AI image generation prowess of Midjourney, an image generating discord bot, with something a little closer to the hearts of the PC Gamer crew, and of course PC gamers in general.
It's been a wild time checking out AI's interpretations of human text input. Whether that be asking it to predict the "last selfie ever taken"—and by extension the future of humanity—or what lies beyond Michelangelo's 'Creation of Adam,'' there have been some truly breathtaking examples; some that have genuinely caused me to consider the universe at large, and my place within it. But between existential crises, I've been wondering how we might somehow benchmark these AI image generation models.
Without access to the kind of immensely high-end hardware it takes to power AI models like these, I wasn't sure how to approach it. But then it dawned on me: "It's a graphical interpretation of words, so why not use words to test it?"
Using the same out of context PC game quotes we use to test the best microphones, which we also put on our PCG Soundcloud if you'd like to have a listen, I figured we could at least put the AI through its paces. And we even ended up with a cohesive art collection that we can call our own. What Midjourney has done with these out of context gaming quotes will forever be a part of the PC Gamer meta.
StarCraft
"You require more Vespene Gas."
"You require more Vespene Gas." (Image credit: Midjourney)This quote from StarCraft appears to have been interpreted with the idea of colonising space in mind, at least, which is highly appropriate. The bottom right corner image is truly a work of art, turning the quote into what looks like a 1920s poster ad. Behold the death of the graphic artist.
Resident Evil
"Jill, here’s a lockpick. It might come in handy if you, the master of unlocking, take it with you."
"Jill, here’s a lockpick. It might come in handy if you, the master of unlocking, take it with you." (Image credit: Midjourney)Regarded as one of probably one of the worst lines ever written in a game, this Resident Evil quote seems to have got the AI in an abstract mood. This interpretation involves no humans handing over lockpicks as anticipated. Instead we're presented with some slightly Dali-esque scenes of lockpicks and other metal instruments bent to form thresholds, glowing portals included. Very surreal.
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
"What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets."
"What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets." (Image credit: Midjourney)Something I was expecting a lot of great designs from was this Castlevania quote. Already it's pretty loaded, and while the noir images are all incredible the bottom left design is my favourite. Faceless AI generated entities give me the shivers, honestly.
Dragon Ninja
"The president has been kidnapped by ninjas. Are you bad enough dude to rescue the president?"
"The president has been kidnapped by ninjas. Are you bad enough dude to rescue the president?" (Image credit: Midjourney)This quote from Dragon Ninja, or Bad Dudes as the English release is called, is a little more abstract. I can see obvious Trump references, and I'm pretty sure the AI is trying to tell us he's actually some kind of alien. Take from it what you will, but none of those look like ninjas to me.
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The Odyssey Ark is "the world’s first 55-inch, 4K curved gaming screen with 165Hz refresh rate and 1ms response time," according to Samsung. It's also a gaming monitor that's perfect for the solo gamer looking for a personal gaming getaway.
The Odyssey Ark first made its presence known at CES 2022, but this was the first time I got to see it up close. And, man, this thing is intimidating. I've seen large format displays before there's something about the curvature at this size that feels like it's enveloping you more than any semi-enclosed workstation could.
I got a chance to spend some time with the Odyssey Ark a few weeks ago at a Samsung press event in New York City. The first impression is that this thing is an absolute beast. Because you have to sit fairly close to it to get the most out of it, it's easy to become fully sucked in whatever game you're playing.
I spent about 90 minutes playing games like DOOM (2018), Forza Horizon, and Microsoft Flight Sim. An hour was enough for me because if I spent any more time playing Doom, the Odyssey Ark was actually starting to look like a portal into Hell, which is a compliment.
The Samsung rep stressed that the Odyssey Ark is about a more personal immersive experience. Because of the curved nature of the screen, the Odyssey Ark is best enjoyed by one person sitting at the center at a pretty close distance. This isn't something you could realistically put in your living room and have a bunch of buddies over and watch the game since the viewing angles aren't the best. Plus switching from Cockpit Mode back to horizontal mode felt unwieldy since it requires a little muscle to lift and turn the thing.If it becomes too much, you can shrink the screen size to 27 inches using the fancy Ark dial wireless remote and a more standard TV remote. This way, you don't have to have your eyes dart around too much when playing a shooter and play games at a size easier on the eyes. More importantly, you can do this without reaching behind or under this giant display.
The massive display even rotates into a portrait mode which Samsung calls Cockpit Mode. The idea is that you stack up to three different displays on top of each other. So you could have a game, YouTube, and Discord all going on simultaneously with audio sources coming out of two places. It looks very sci-fi and overwhelming at first, but I can see some folks really getting into this and using the Ark as a very expensive second screen.
For productivity's sake, it might be easier to just work from your PC desktop and mess around with your size windows than fiddle with the display's built-in apps. Though, I didn't have much time to test that theory. I couldn't imagine trying to work on a screen this big without thinking I was going to be pulled into a blank page of a Word doc aka a writer's nightmare.
Everything is connected through Samsung's One Connect Box, which plugs a single cable to the Ark. It has 4 HDMI 2.1 ports, so you'll be able to plug in the latest game consoles and GPUs and get the best frame rate they can support at 4K.
Image 1 of 9(Image credit: Future - Jorge Jimenez)Image 2 of 9(Image credit: Future - Jorge Jimenez)Image 3 of 9(Image credit: Future - Jorge Jimenez)Image 4 of 9(Image credit: Future - Jorge Jimenez)Image 5 of 9(Image credit: Future - Jorge Jimenez)Image 6 of 9(Image credit: Future - Jorge Jimenez)Image 7 of 9(Image credit: Future - Jorge Jimenez)Image 8 of 9(Image credit: Future - Jorge Jimenez)Image 9 of 9(Image credit: Future - Jorge Jimenez)Screen queens(Image credit: Future)Best gaming monitor: Pixel-perfect panels for your PC
Best high refresh rate monitor: Screaming quick screens
Best 4K monitor for gaming: When only high-res will do
Best 4K TV for gaming: Big-screen 4K PC gamingIt includes all the features and apps you'll find on current Samsung TVs, so it's like you're getting a hybrid of a gaming monitor and TV. But it's really for the gamer who has an elaborate cockpit set up for games like Forza, Elite: Dangerous, and MS Flight Simulator, who, instead of paying for 2-3 ultrawide displays, can buy this single display for roughly the same price.
Speaking of price, having your own personal gaming fortress of solitude isn't going to come cheap. The Odyssey Ark is going to retail for $3,500. Still want that second, or even third, one?
Samsung is currently taking reservations to pre-order the Odyssey Ark on its website. Anyone that reserves the Ark right will get $100 slashed off the price when pre-orders open, and expect to receive the massive curved gaming screen in early September. Oh, and yeah, we will definitely be reviewing this lovely monstrosity when it becomes available to us.
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A new version of Nvidia's DLSS has appeared with the release of Final Fantasy Origin and Spider-Man Remastered. The new DLL, which has a version number of 2.4.12.0, can be used in pretty much any game that supports the DLSS 2.x, although you need to be careful with any multiplayer games as swapping out the DLLs could be seen as cheating, and potentially get you banned. You also can't use DLSS 2.x files with DLSS 1.x games.
It's worth noting as well that the DLSS version isn't part of the driver package, but rather ships with the individual game. This is why any new game release that supports DLSS is potentially interesting—it could lead to a better version of the upscaling technology for every game. It rarely works quite like that, but if a game isn't actively being updated, it could miss out on a newer version for sure.
You can grab the new DLSS DLL file yourself (available to download from TechPowerUp) and copy it over the existing version in your games of choice—make sure you back the original file up first though.
There is a much better way, though, in the form of DLSS Swapper. It's a cool little app that now exists on the Microsoft Store, so no tricky installation is needed. This is a great tool for managing the various DLSS versions you have installed and lets you swap to whichever one you want to use for a particular game. It'll even automatically download the latest version, which makes life easy.
As for this new DLSS version 2.4.12.0, the general consensus (at least according to this subreddit) is that this is one to pass on. It appears to introduce more ghosting and shimmering than previous versions. Your experience may differ though, and if you're unhappy with the DLSS that ships with a game, then it's certainly worth experimenting with.
The general takeaway at this stage is that version 2.4.6.0 is still wildly seen as the version of choice for most games. That's the one you want to use where possible. Still, it's good to see Nvidia is still tweaking its upscaling technology, even though it's generally considered to be the best upscaling option around. AMD has garnered plenty of support for its FSR 2.0 technology though, which is keeping the pressure on
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Razer's DeathAdder line of gaming mice has become a trusted staple among PC gamers, spawning an impressive lineage of devices since the original launched in 2016. Now in 2022, these mice have continued to garner acclaim with the Razer DeathAdder V2 wired mouse sitting atop our list of best gaming mice you can get. The wireless version, the Razer DeathAdder V2 Pro also holds a respectable second place spot in our list of best wireless mice on offer.
Razer has recently announced the new specs on the wireless successor, the DeathAdder V3 Pro. With some of these changes, our current number one wireless mouse, the Logitech G502 Lightspeed mouse might just want to watch its back.
One of the biggest notable changes on the new Razer DeathAdder V3 Pro is the weight, dropping down to only 63 grams for the black mouse, and 64g for the white. The V2 Pro weighs 88g so that's a significant drop. It's nearly as light as the Razer DeathAdder V2 mini which will still take the cake as the brand's lightest mouse weighing in at 62g. If the DeathAdder V3 Pro releases in a colour that somehow weighs less than black mind, it could be in trouble.
Lightweight mice are all the rage this year, especially for wireless devices. Not only does it make them easier to carry around, but can genuinely make them much nicer to use. Picking up a mouse for flick shots or even just general maneuvering does feel easier with less weight, so it's nice to see Razer following the trend.
Perfect peripherals(Image credit: Colorwave)Best gaming mouse: the top rodents for gaming
Best gaming keyboard: your PC's best friend...
Best gaming headset: don't ignore in-game audioAnother upgrade to the V3 is an improved optical sensor. The new Focus Pro 30k Optical Sensor is a step up from last years' 20k version and is also packed with AI features to help improve your mousework. Plus it will also work on a greater range of desk surfaces, including thick glass.
The Razer DeathAdder V3 Pro will support Razer's new 4000 Hz wireless dongle which attaches to your desk and is designed for people who really want a super accurate wireless experience. Razer's HyperPolling Wireless Dongle won't come with the standard V3, but is releasing on July 22, before the V3 mouse launches on August 11. It will be compatible with both the V3 and the Viper V2 Pro, as well as future mice yet to come.
The Razer DeathAdder V3 Pro and the HyperPolling Wireless Dongle are set to retail for $150 USD and $30 USD respectively when they release in the coming months. A bundle with both products together will be available for preorder for $165 but so far will only be on the Razer store as opposed to other retailers.
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A recent thread in tech news has been BMW's move towards nickel-and-diming owners of its cars with microtransactions, a move so popular that BMW software hacks are now available. This is a shard of a wider debate about modern technology which, from cars to iPhones, has in many cases been trending towards locking the user out of the internals of something they apparently own. This is most relevant when it comes to the right to repair old equipment without having to involve the original manufacturer (and of course pay an inflated fee for the privilege).
While the mainstream reacted with disgust to the BMW stuff, anyone who's ever been near a farm probably wasn't so surprised: farming equipment has been screwing them like this for decades. The biggest firm in the agricultural manufacturing field is John Deere, which makes all kinds of machinery that runs on the company's proprietary software: which both monitors farmers extremely closely and force them to involve John Deere whenever there's a problem. These tractors are designed so that farmers can't fix problems themselves.
This is on one level a nasty monopoly practice, but the implications of it are much wider. There's the simple fact that a huge amount of the world's food supply depends on John Deere equipment, and so any large-scale software problems could be catastrophic. John Deere itself might not have any plans to do such a thing, but then again it did recently show it could 'brick' Ukrainian farming equipment stolen by the Russians. The scarier prospect is that so much of the farming industry depends on John Deere keeping its systems secure from bad actors.
Most farmers, meanwhile, would probably much prefer a world where they could maintain their own machinery and not have to pay engineers to come out and tap a few commands on a tablet. Tough cheese, cheesemakers!
The company's various rationales for its big closed system contains some ridiculous arguments, including that farmers don't own these tractors but license them, and that locking farmers out is for their own good.
Needless to say the John Deere system has attracted some white hat attention, and Australian hacker Sickcodes recently gave a presentation during the security event Defcon, held at Caesar's Forum in Las Vegas, where to audience cheers they executed a jailbreak on the control unit of a John Deere tractor. Then, they demonstrated their control of the system by playing a special farm-modded version of Doom on the hardware.
The Doom flourish is lovely, and cam about thanks to help from Doom modder Skelegant
Playing Doom on a John Deere tractor display (jailbroken/rooted) at @defcon pic.twitter.com/ih0QUTGNuSAugust 14, 2022
See moreWith epic just-in-time help by NZ based doom modder @Skelegant. She helped get this run using DeHacked Doom, since gzdoom was a mission. Together, we teamed up to make this happen. She is amazingly talented. pic.twitter.com/OfVDMvRhzRAugust 14, 2022
See moreBlasting through fields aside, the implications of this hack could be seriously big within the agriculture industry. One attendee of the talk was prominent tech thinker Cory Doctorow, who subsequently wrote:
"While it's true that the John Deere tractor monopoly means that defects in the company's products could affect farms all around the world, it's also true that John Deere is very, very bad at information security:"
Essentially John Deere has the entire agricultural industry by the short-and-curlies, justifies this with dubious claims about why the status quo it has constructed is essential, and has power over farmers that it has no right to hold. As the Ukrainian incident showed, and as Doctorow pointed out at the time, "this meant that anyone who could hack John Deere's system could brick any tractor—including, say, the Russian military's hacking squads."
Another attendee at the talk was right-to-repair advocate Kyle Wiens, who pointed out that John Deere's control unit is built on outdated and unpatched systems:
Sick Codes has jailbroken a John Deere, and this is just the beginning. Turns out our entire food system is built on outdated, unpatched Linux and Windows CE hardware with LTE modems. pic.twitter.com/OLDBckluxrAugust 14, 2022
See more"John Deere has repeatedly told regulators that farmers can't be trusted to repair their own equipment," writes Wiens. "This foundational work will pave the path for farmers to retake control of the equipment that they own."
The jailbreak developed by Sickcodes is not remote, but requires physical access to the equipment. Regardless of hacks, however, John Deere is also facing serious government and regulatory pressure. The European Union announced earlier this year it was establishing a right to repair principle, while some US states have already passed their own right-to-repair laws: the pressure resulted in the company announcing this March that it would widen access to repair tools.
So: this hack runs Doom, and also has potentially enormous consequences for agribusiness: or, at the very least, for farmers who've had enough of John Deere's practices. Among Sickcodes' many findings were that the control system was sending huge amounts of data back to John Deeere (once he had admin access, the unit tried to send 1.5GB of data), various security backdoors including one enabled through placing an empty text file on the drive, and John Deere's apparent reliance on open source software that may not be being used appropriately under its licensing terms.
Sickcodes says he's working on an easier method for executing the hack, as his demonstration was pretty involved, in order that more farmers can make practical use of this thing. I've dropped him a line with some follow-ups, and will update with any response.
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OLED panels are becoming a common trait in TVs, but why aren't there many gaming monitors with the exciting panel technology? Don't fret, Asus may have two new products to try and push OLEDs onto our desktops: the ROG Swift OLED PG42UQ and ROG Swift OLED PG48UQ.
These impressive new OLED gaming monitors are set for a release towards the end of the month, however, Asus has allowed us to take a look at them in-person ahead of time to see what all the fuss is about. And I have to say the panel is very impressive, made a little more so by its ultra-slim and nearly bezel-less frame.
First off, the key specs. Of the two new OLEDs headed out from Asus this month, the only difference is their size: the PG42UQ is a 42-inch panel and the PG48UQ is a 48-inch panel.
It's the 42-inch that I'm most interested in. That's already a seriously massive screen but does just about engage your complete vision from a normal seated position at a desk. The 48-inch, on the other hand, really is rather massive. That's much more of a living room-style gaming monitor than one intended for the desktop, though I'd behove you to try it nonetheless.
Both screens share the same core functionality, at least. Each is built to offer up to 800 nits of brightness (which was originally touted as 900 nits but later revised down) with a contrast that you really can only expect out of an OLED. That means near-perfect blacks and a real depth to the image on display.
Each OLED panel is rated to 0.1ms response time and 120Hz refresh rate, though you can push that up to 138Hz via overclocking and a DisplayPort connection. They're also noted as G-Sync compatible. Asus says long running times and continued use at these sorts of speeds is no issue for these monitors; while they're extremely thin around the edges, I'm told the chunky heatsink in the back actually keeps them running relatively cool.
Each panel comes with a selection of HDMI 2.0 and HDMI 2.1 ports, which means you can hook up a modern-day console to this panel and get the most out of it. That's going to be particularly handy on the larger of the two screens, as this could be a realistic stand-in for a TV.
I tried out a couple of laps in a sim rig with three of these screens loaded into it— a mighty experience that made me wish I had £30,000–£40,000 to take it home with me. In a more realistic gaming scenario, I blasted a fair few grunts in Halo on a single monitor gaming setup and the picture was thoroughly impressive. From the inky blacks to the swift response, it all gelled together very nicely indeed. I didn't notice a drop of haloing nor any backlight bleed during my hands-on time, though the room was relatively bright so I couldn't quite test it at the extremes. Similarly I never noticed much ghosting, but we'll have to take a closer look to properly verify.
(Image credit: Future)Screen queens(Image credit: Future)Best gaming monitor: Pixel-perfect panels for your PC
Best high refresh rate monitor: Screaming quick screens
Best 4K monitor for gaming: When only high-res will do
Best 4K TV for gaming: Big-screen 4K PC gamingYet these look to be two very impressive gaming monitors, and unsurprisingly they come at a premium price. The ROG Swift OLED PG42UQ will launch for around £1,400 and the larger ROG Swift OLED PG48UQ for £1,500 (US pricing not confirmed). Now that's not much of a price difference for another six inches of screen real estate, but again I do think the 42-inch option is the better buy for a desktop PC setup.
Will these two monitors be able to make a bigger OLED-shaped dent in the PC gaming monitor market? Well, we hailed the Alienware 34 AW3423DW QD-OLED as the arrival of OLED on PC, and one of those will set you back £1,099, or $1,299 in the states. These two Asus models are asking more than that, so we'll have to see. At the very least the arrival of Alienware and Asus into the world of PC OLEDs is a sign of things to come—I have a feeling if these two are doing it then we'll see a whole lot more OLEDs designed for PC make it to market in the second half of 2022 and into 2023.
Bring on CES, 2023; there's sure to be a heap of OLED gaming monitors at the Las Vegas tech show if these recent releases are any indication.
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How much of your budget should the CPU use up for your next build? It's a question plenty of us will need to ask as we head into new CPU territory this autumn. AMD's Zen 4-powered Ryzen 7000 chips are expected to launch at the same time as Intel's Raptor Lake, and pricing rumours are already appearing. And depending on which rumour you look at, it could be bad news for your bank account.
Serial leaker, momomo_us, has taken to Twitter, highlighting the pricing of four Ryzen 7000 chips that have turned up on the PC-Canada website (via Tom's Hardware.)
pic.twitter.com/6OyYrKSuDzAugust 14, 2022See moreThe most affordable chip is the Ryzen 5 7600X at CAD$435 which equates to $339 US. If that's right, then that represents a $40 premium compared to the launch price of Ryzen 5 5600X, which debuted at $299. The top of range Ryzen 7 7950X meanwhile, rolls in at CAD$1,158 which equates to $896 US, compared to the Ryzen 9 5950X launch price of $799.
An argument could be made for such price increases—it is a new technology after all, and one would hope that there is a significant performance increase over the previous generation. In fact, the market is very different to when AMD released its Zen 3 chips almost two years ago when Intel was not as competitive as it is now. These days Alder Lake is a much more tempting option, and Intel has priced its chips very competitively, with the likes of the Core i5 12600K available for $280.
The fact that the last full generation from AMD could command a premium was also down to the fact that they were potentially a drop-in replacement for existing systems. Zen 3 used the same AM4 platform as the previous generations, and a BIOS update was potentially all that was needed.
That isn't the case with Zen 4 though, which entails moving to a whole new platform—you'll need a new motherboard and DDR5 memory too. You should be able to carry across your CPU cooler at least, although you're still looking at a costly upgrade.
Your next upgrade(Image credit: Future)Best CPU for gaming: The top chips from Intel and AMD
Best gaming motherboard: The right boards
Best graphics card: Your perfect pixel-pusher awaits
Best SSD for gaming: Get into the game ahead of the restThis isn't the only rumour doing the rounds though, and another has popped up on Wccftech that has the Ryzen 5 7600X starting at closer to the 5600X's current price of around $200 US. That's far more tempting a price point given the investment needed for the overall system upgrade. It isn't clear where this pricing information has come from though, and it could just be down to wishful thinking.
There are often pricing leaks before a new family of chips is launched, and this generation is obviously no different. However, it's also worth pointing out that these are rarely accurate. In fact, I can't remember the last time any pre-release pricing held up, particularly this early on. And that's chiefly because of the nature of the beast—pricing is often one of the last things to be locked in with a new product launch.
Given we don't have an exact date for Zen 4 yet, you should take all of this with a small pile of the finest sodium chloride.
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The popularity of city builders with a survival bent has seen the genre become quite a bit more stressful in recent years, but while Airborne Kingdom occasionally throws you a curveball, like your floating city is tilting too much and everyone is rightly fleeing in case they plummet to the ground, it's more of a leisurely journey across the sky. And one that's about to take players to new places, as some DLC is on the way. Good news: it's free.
While Airborne Kingdom has revelled in its reputation as a more relaxing city builder, The Lost Tundra is designed to be a bit more challenging than the rest of the game. If you want to push your city a bit more than usual, or you want to add an element of risk to your skyfaring holiday, this might be up your street.
Food, water and coal can't be found in this chilly place, and the weather heightens the danger, freezing parts of your city and generally making it harder to maintain. There are new components you can add to mitigate this, but at the cost of resources and extra weight.
For those who can survive in this inhospitable region, developer The Wandering Band promises "great rewards" and hidden locations where you can discover new cosmetics and customisation options.
In my Airborne Kingdom review, I called it a "smart, hypnotic city builder that won't leave you tearing your hair out," and while that last part might no longer be true when the tricky DLC arrives, I'm still eager to return—if only to repaint my clockwork city and make it even more striking.
The Lost Tundra is due out on September 19 via Steam and the Epic Games Store.
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An announcement from Stability.ai comes with some great news for anyone on the AI image generation hype. Stable Diffusion, an image generation software that uses consumer level hardware, will soon be going public.
As you can see from the header image the pictures being generated by the soon-to-be-released AI model are looking pretty incredible, especially considering how little GPU power it needs. The image generator has been led through development by Robin Rombach of LMU Munich's Machine Vision & Learning Research group, and Patrick Esser who helped develop video editing software, Runway.
The announcement notes that the AI model runs on "under 10GB of VRAM on consumer GPUs." Essentially you can run it on a 10GB Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080, an AMD Radeon RX 6700 or potentially something less powerful, though there's nothing here about the minimum graphics requirements. That's still contrary to a lot of AI generation models, which tend to be hosted by servers since they take several Nvidia A100 GPUs to run.
Stable Diffusion is trained on Stability AI's 4,000 A100 Ezra-1 AI ultracluster, with more than 10,000 beta testers generating 1.7 million images per day in order to explore this approach.
The core dataset for Stable Diffusion comes from the upcoming CLIP-based AI model LAION-Aesthetics, which filters the images based on how "beautiful" they are. I'm not exactly sure how beauty has been defined in this instance, however. LAION-Aesthetics selects and reworks images from LAION 5B's massive database, that was created in order address the issue that datasets—such as the billions of image and text pairs used by Dall-E and CLIP—have not been made openly available.
(Image credit: Stability AI)Apparently the AI can generate images at 512x512 pixel resolution in just a few seconds, though I assume upscaling to larger images will take a little longer. There's still a long way to go, with the Stability AI team still researching the current method of image generation.
100% open. 100% free
Christoph SchuhmannThe great news is that "this will provide the template for the release of many open models we are currently training to unlock human potential."
What a time to be alive, hey?
"We look forward to the open ecosystem that will emerge around this and further models to truly explore the boundaries of latent space," the announcement says.
Your next upgrade(Image credit: Future)Best CPU for gaming: The top chips from Intel and AMD
Best gaming motherboard: The right boards
Best graphics card: Your perfect pixel-pusher awaits
Best SSD for gaming: Get into the game ahead of the restThere's also a note at the bottom from LAION's Organizational Lead & Researcher, Christoph Schuhmann, who says: "With this project we continue to pursue our mission to make state of the art machine learning accessible for people from all over the world. 100% open. 100% free."
A noble sentiment. What that appears to say is that Stable Diffusion may well be coming to consumer PCs completely free. If you're looking to get involved sooner, you can sign up for a first stage of release of the Stable Diffusion AI image generator here—that's for research and academic purposes only, mind.
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Intel has officially removed native DX9 support from its Arc and 12th Gen graphics hardware. You might now be wondering where that leaves older games in your library that still utilise the ageing API. There's nothing to fear, Intel isn't ending DX9 support completely, it's instead differing bug testing and support to Microsoft and its D3D9On12 emulation layer.
Intel is ditching its native DX9 driver and will call on Microsoft's D3D9On12 mapping layer when required. This layer essentially takes DX9 commands and translates them to DX12 commands, thus cutting out a whole stack of driver optimisations that Intel would have otherwise needed to build for itself.
Think of it in a similar vein to how Valve's Proton compatibility layer converts DirectX commands to Vulkan API commands, in order to make gaming on the Steam Deck a whole lot simpler.
"12th generation Intel processor's integrated GPU and Arc discrete GPU no longer support D3D9 natively," a support page on the Intel website says (via Tom's Hardware). Applications and games based on DirectX 9 can still work through Microsoft* D3D9On12 interface."
This should work in Intel's favour, as the company has admitted it is struggling with APIs that are older than the more recent DX12 and Vulkan APIs on its latest Arc GPUs.
"It's just going to be a labor of love for forever making DX11 titles better and better and better. And DX9 as well," says Intel's Tom Peterson. "But then Vulkan and DX12 titles are just, in general, going to be more optimised for Intel GPUs as we start to have a larger footprint."
Sitting comfortably?(Image credit: Secretlab)Best chair for gaming: the top gaming chairs around
Best gaming desk: the ultimate PC podiums
Best PC controller: sit back, relax, and get your game onWith this compatibility layer from Microsoft, Intel can effectively set aside efforts on DX9 titles and instead refer to Microsoft's expertise with its own API to optimise these games instead.
"Since DirectX is property of and is sustained by Microsoft, troubleshooting of DX9 apps and games issues require promoting any findings to Microsoft Support so they can include the proper fixes in their next update of the operating system and the DirectX APIs," Intel says.
Though Intel does still need to figure out DX11 support, and that is by far the more important piece of the Arc driver puzzle that Intel needs to figure out. Many popular and modern games still rely on the DX11 API, so making that work with Arc will be one key to any success it hopes to achieve.
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It is the year of our lord 2022, and Half-Life 1 just enjoyed its highest number of concurrent players on Steam since it hit the platform 19 years ago.
WE DID IT!
#RememberFreeman 12,280 Half-Life players!New all-time peak player record for Half-Life on Steam pic.twitter.com/Up1bxAruQRAugust 14, 2022See moreDepending on which Steam stats tracker you're looking at (the numbers are slightly different between SteamDB and the official Steam stats page), Half-Life 1 was being played by anywhere from 12,280 to 12,310 players across the world on the balmy afternoon of August 14. Its previous record was 6022, set during a week when the game was free-to-play in January 2020.
The new record was set by players participating in the #RememberFreeman campaign, organised by the Half-Life community and popularised by Youtubers like Radiation Hazard and Noclick. The purpose of the campaign is honestly quite sweet: to show that Valve's 1998 classic still has a dedicated community of fans that love it. It's a marked contrast from the recent campaign by fans of Team Fortress 2, which was launched out of frustration in order to get Valve to pay attention to an infestation of bots that's plagued the game for years.
The #RememberFreeman campaign is a sequel of sorts to last year's "Breaking the Bar" event, which smashed Half-Life 2's concurrent player record by getting 16,601 people to boot up that game and play for at least half an hour. Personally, I'm hoping that next year we get a quarter of a million people playing Ricochet. We can do it if we just believe.
Of course, this is only the highest number of concurrent players since Steam began keeping these records. Half-Life 1 came out in 1998, imprinted onto unknowable alien relics called compact discs and was, you may recall, quite popular. It's very unlikely that this record is really the most people that have ever played Half-Life 1 at the same time, but it's a pretty impressive achievement for a 24 year-old game nonetheless.
EA will honor the biggest pricing error we've ever seen
in Gaming News
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In what may be the greatest regional pricing difference in the history of videogames, Epic Games Store pre-purchases for FIFA 23 recently went on sale in India for 4.80 rupees. That comes to about $0.06 USD.
The price was an error, of course: FIFA 23 is meant to be priced at 3,499 Indian rupees (INR), which comes to about $44.17 in US dollars. That would make the accidental price a 99.86% discount, but there's more. The erroneous price wasn't for the normal version of FIFA 23. It was for the Ultimate Edition, which costs 4,799 INR. That brings the discount to 99.98%, and everyone who took advantage of it will get to keep the game, according to an email from EA (which we saw via Sportskeeda).
"A few weeks back, we scored a pretty spectacular own-goal when we inadvertently offered FIFA 23 pre-purchase on the Epic Games Store at an incorrect price," EA wrote in the letter. "It was our mistake, and we wanted to let you know that we'll be honoring all pre-purchases made at that price."
An EA Sports representative confirmed to PC Gamer that the message is accurate. For the rest of us, there's good news and bad news when it comes to FIFA's pricing. The good news is that FIFA 23's PC version isn't the last-gen console version like FIFA 22 was. It's the same version appearing on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, with the same trademarked features (the big one is "HyperMotion2 Technology" this time). The bad news is that we're also paying the current-gen console price: $70 in the US and £60 in the UK, the new normal for big multiplatform games.
In India, the price has also gone up between FIFA 22 and FIFA 23, from 2,999 to 3,499 INR for the standard version, and 4,299 to 4,799 INR for the Ultimate Edition. EA wouldn't say how many people scored the accidental 99.98% discount, but they've got to be feeling pretty good about it.
FIFA 23 happens to be the last EA FIFA game, at least for the time being, because EA Sports and FIFA are parting ways. EA will still make soccer games, but it'll be under the EA Sports FC name. Meanwhile, FIFA still plans for FIFA games to exist, but we're not sure yet how it's accomplishing that.
Unlike FIFA 23, the PC version of Madden NFL 23 will be the $60 last-gen console version. I'm not sure why that series is lagging behind on PC, but EA Sports told PC Gamer that it wants to create parity between the PC and current gen console versions of Madden in the future.
FIFA 23 releases on September 30. I wouldn't count on seeing any more 99.98% discounts before or after then, but I guess you never know. Black Friday deal?
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